I have a Dell Inspiron 530 desktop running Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit. It has 2 optical drives, an Optiarc DVD+-RW AD-570S ATA device and a TSSTcorp CDRWDVD TS-H493B ATA device. When I install software that uses the GEAR driver, such as iTunes and Norton 360 backup, the drives become disabled. It adds the following line to the DVD/CD-ROM section of the registry: ?UpperFilters REG_MULTI_SZ GEARAspiWDM?. With this line in the registry, Windows does not see either optical drive. If I delete this line, the drives are available and are useable by other burning applications that do not use the GEAR driver, but the applications that use the GEAR driver do not work. Both drives have the current Vista drivers installed. Has anyone experienced this problem and has a solution to it.

My associate here Mr. Szabo has a Vista 32 bit system and 5 programs containing GEAR drivers on them, and can burn from GEAR and Vista directly with no issues. This is not a common bug that everyone is experiencing.

To be sure though, there are others who have experienced this same issue, but it always relates to some third party program that has undesirable effects with GEAR Drivers.

On a fresh Vista Machine you would not be having this issue. The question is what software that was installed or ran on your machine caused this inconsistency? One program in the past that caused a similar issue with GEAR drivers was Daemon tools, and even if you completely uninstalled Daemon tools the problem would still exist. We consulted DT about this and they have come up with a patch to fix this issue, if you feel your issue could be related to this, here is a link to a Wiki article explaining and providing another link to the patch:

If this is not the case, then if the solution is finally found, it will more than likely be similar. The only question is to what was installed or ran that caused the issue, and the problem being the sheer number of software available out there to use that may or may not affect IMAPI or SPTD, etc?.

You could try uninstalling programs that make use of optical devices, but if it is similar to Daemon tools a un-install would not actually help.

I wish there was an easy answer to this kind of issue, but this is not an easy one. Solving this problem could possibly be done by starting with a clean machine, installing GEAR first then one by one installing the other software on your machine, until the issue re-occurs, but then again, what if there was a program that was run or installed that had been forgotten. There is no sure way to debug this.

The best I can offer is to try as I said and uninstall any optical device involved programs and see if this helps, if not then you may want to see how much this is worth it to you, as debugging this issue could take hours.

I did not install Daemon tools. Is it possible that it was installed as part of another program? If so, is there a way to determine if it is on my machine? Is there a driver or registry key I should search for?

Restoring my system to it's original state is a last resort, but I may eventually have to go that route because there are other problems which can only be resolved by a clean machine. Before I do that I want to explore all other options.

Even the Daemon tools issue I cannot tell you exactly what it did, except that it involved the SPTD drivers that GEAR also makes use of. Daemon Tools themselves would have to explain that if they could.

If there is a problem some other program had with GEAR, not even anything specific, but some unknown program we haven't narrowed down to cause an issue with GEAR yet, then I couldn't begin to debug where the issue is coming from or what value in the Registry or what signs could show if there is a problem.

GEAR speaks directly with the recorder sending it commands. There is driver software and levels of other programs managed and unmanaged that could interfere with this communication, but you would for one have to implement a program such as BusTrace in some instances, in others follow a detailed SCSI logging, and in even more remote cases follow through the code step by step in a debug build on the system in question that is having problems.

None of those can be guessed at before tried and all of those solutions to finding the answer require a developper and a considerably large amount of time.

I do apologize you are not experiencing an easy issue. Debugging what is wrong piece by piece is a time consuming process any way you look at it, and someone has to be at the machine and willing to spend the hours to do so.

Try uninstalling any software you may suspect COULD have an issue with GEAR as a simple start, maybe you'll get lucky...

I really wish I had some better answers for you, but computers and software are not always pleasent.

I have the same exact problem and have had it even when installing iTunes before other applications (iTunes has the Gear driver).

HARDWARE: Dell Inspiron 9400 Core Duo with TSSTcorp DVD+RW TS-L532B. I started with a new formatted drive. I installed XP -> Vista Upgrade -> and then iTunes with Gear 32 bit driver. Bamn! My TSST CD/DVD writer became unusable. I know this, because it was suddenly highlighted in Device Manager.

Microsoft Knowledge Base #320553 (previously Q320553) offers the same work-around described by Flash1223 in the original post: Remove Gear's Upper & Lower filter. Now, the DVD drive is active in Device Manager and even writes DVDs with other applications such as another burning application or CD Creator. But iTunes is dependent upon the registry keys for Gear. Without these entries, iTunes complains "No record software". Very frustrating, indeed!

Two pieces of information that was not covered earlier:

1. Mr. Szabo & staff may be correct. There may be another program in play, becuase every so often, the Gear drivers re-appear. For DVD writing, I use another burning application, Windows Mediaplayer and occasionally Windows drag & drop.

2. When the reg entries are in place, you can see the problem from Device Manager, The drive shows a yellow exclamation and it's properties state:

"This device cannot start. (Code 10)
Click 'Check for solutions' to send data about this device to Microsoft and to see if there is a solution available."

If this problem is ever solved, I urge Gear to post a formal and very visible statement. Get iTunes to push the tip to all users. It can been frustrating for most users to even realize that iTunes and Gear were related to the problem.

I've posted elsewhere, only to find others creating new posts of the issue and the same response from Gearsoftware "our software isn't the problem"

My situation: home built computer, Asus P5N32-E SLI MoBo - Sony DVDRW DRU-710A DVD drive. System was fine until an iTunes update - then after reboot DVD drive wasn't recognized by system (and iTunes) - only way to get iTunes to burn a CD was to remove the upper filter Gearaspiwdm entry, then reboot, system would see DVD, then I'd have to re-install iTunes to get it to burn CD...but then if I reboot, no DVD drive (system can't install gear driver).

Update: I spent 1.5 hours today on the phone with iTunes - we uninstalled all instances of Gear software and unintalled iTunes. rebooted, System could recognize DVD drive, all is well - installed the latest Gear 32 drivers from Gearsoftware.com - rebooted, system could no longer recognize DVD drive - iTunes tech support is promising to look into it and get back to me - I'll keep you updated.

Is there anywhere that I can download the previous version of gearsoftware before the january release?

Dhas, unfortunately this is an issue we have not been able to reproduce on any of the systems we have, making it difficult to diagnose or fix.

Since you indicated that everything is fine until you reboot, I will have to guess that either another driver is causing a conflict during system start up or that the OS is not allowing the driver to start.

BTW what OS are you seeing this on? Vista? And if so, do you have service pack 1 installed?

We are currently testing a new driver installation routine which meets the driver installation requirements imposed by Vista's Service Pack 1.

However, since we have been unable to reproduce the issue you are having, I do not know if it will be solved by the new driver installer.

If interested in trying out a copy of this new driver installer, please send an email to support@gearsoftware.com and indicate you want to beta test the new driver installer.

FYI: I uninstalled gear software and iTunes 7.6. I then reinstalled iTunes version 7.5 - the GEARAspiWDM.sys has modify date: Tuesday, ‎September ‎19, ‎2006, ‏‎2:44:04 PM - my system can reboot after install and recognize the DVD drive - the only problem is that iTunes 7.5 can't read my library file from 7.6 and won't start - but the gear drivers seem fine on the system - I then uninstalled 7.5 and reinstalled 7.6 - same issue is there - I then tried copying the GEARAspiWDM.sys and GEARAspi.dll files from the 7.5 install (saved them) over the 7.6 installed drivers but that didn't work.

Like many I am very frustrated with this problem every time iTunes or similar software is updated. And also the loss of functionality in iTunes when the upper filters entry has to be deleted in the registry to get the drives back (otherwise code 10) in Vista.

We are very much in a cleft stick here and cannot point an accusatory finger in any particular direction because (as far as I know) no one has sufficient information to do this, or to solve the problem. Unfortunately no one seems to have the will to try to solve the problem.

Perhaps Gear might be so kind as to reveal which software products contain their drivers so that we might have a fighting chance to find the other conflicting "filter driver" by elimination. One forum member asked whether a pc had any other "filter drivers" loaded. How do I know? How can I find out?

Some time ago I deleted all software off my Vista system that I though could conflict and also deleted iTunes and another burning application. I then reloaded the Gear drivers (nothing else), only to find the problem appeared (or the drives disappeared should I say). Where should I go from here? iTunes and another burning application have nothing to do with the problem, that I confirmed.

I believe this issue has been around for about 2 years (probably since the release of Vista), we need a fix because I for one am totally bored with this problem.

I did an update to iTunes v 7.7.0.43 last night fully expecting that I would have the usual problem of my optical drives disappearing after re-boot. Low and behold they didn't.... I couldn't believe it

So FINALLY I have Vista with iTunes and iTunes works (can burn DVDs) AND the drives are there for other applications. My slight worry is I don't know how this was fixed and whether it will re-appear in the future.

I notice that there is a new version of the Gear drivers 4.001.7 dated 11th July, which I have not explicitly loaded myself. This hasn't been distributed by so other means has it? Has this fixed the problem or has the problem been fixed some other way.

After analyzing the system information files sent to us by affected iTunes users, it appears that there may be an incompatibility with the \windows\system32\drivers\afs.sys driver.

Disabling this driver may solve the problem.

However since we have not been able to get a copy of this driver for testing, we are unable to verify that this driver is indeed causing a conflict.

If you are experiencing this problem and have this driver installed on your system, please zip up the file and send a copy to support@gearsoftware.com. In addition a system information file for your system would be helpful.

You can generate a System Information file by clicking Start, and then click Run. In the Open box, type msinfo32.exe and click OK. In the System Information dialog select Save in the File menu.